Rating:

In a hurry?  Recommendation   

In 1984, when Cirque du Soleil were still street performers, Guy Laliberté, founder and chief executive officer, said, “If the Cirque makes it big, it will be because it succeeds at marrying art and business.” Today, Cirque du Soleil has 11 shows worldwide, and Guy Laliberté is worth over $1 billion.

To most companies, art is something you put on walls. Companies like Apple, Virgin, Starbucks, 3M, Harley Davidson, and Disney see it differently. Their work environments reflect the priorities and values of the organization’s leaders. Like the Cirque du Soleil, these innovative companies understand the importance of nuturing collaboration through creative means.

Many of these successful companies have similar internal mandates:

• Have fun
• Use storytelling, art, dance, music, and other artistic principles as a universal language of continuous learning and creativity
• Encourage the transfer of skills by stimulating critical and creative thinking, encouraging ideas and inspiring new approaches to problem solving and decision making
• Create an environment where people focus on collaboration rather than competition
• Encourage people to believe in themselves, their work roles, and their contributions
• Breathe life into employees' thinking and imagination through the inspiration of others

If you think that art is reserved only for the avant garde in business, consider this. In 1962, NASA took up the challenge issued by President John F. Kennedy to land "a man on the Moon and [return] him safely to the Earth.” With a combination of engineering, imagination, and possibility thinking, they used a number of art-based activities (mindmaps, models, storyboards, sculptures, etc.) to make what most people thought impossible, possible.

To enhance an organization's competitive advantage and have fun doing it, take a look at Orchestrating Collaboration at Work: Using Music, Improv, Storytelling, and Other Arts to Improve Teamwork by Linda Naiman and Arthur VanGundy. I read the electronic book (e-book) available from the website of one of the authors, but it is also available from Wiley (see link in left column).

Linda Naiman is founder of CreativityatWork.com, a Vancouver-based coaching, consulting, and training group working with corporate and public sector organizations. She began her career as a design consultant and won numerous industry awards in graphic design and illustration. Her background in art and design led her to explore artistic processes and their applications to leadership and transformation in business.

Arthur VanGundy is professor of communication at the University of Oklahoma and president of VanGundy & Associates, a creativity and innovation consulting firm. He is considered a pioneer of idea generation techniques and has written 11 books on creativity.

Chapter 1 of their book is an introduction and overview; Chapter 2 describes the importance of art and its contribution in a team-based environment; Chapter 3 is devoted to “getting acquainted and icebreaker” activities; and Chapter 4 offers a number of warm-up activities with an artistic theme.

The rest of the chapters are grouped into art-based topics such as collage-mixed media, drawing, music, painting, poetry, storytelling, and theater improvisation. The authors and other contributors wrote the activities.

Each of the 70 activities is designed with a particular art form in mind. They are laid out well, making them easy to read. Each activity has seven parts, ranging from the objective and uses of the activity to the time and materials required.

Daniel Goleman in his book Working with Emotional Intelligence has maintained that “coming up with a creative insight is a cognitive act—but realizing the value, nurturing it, and following through calls on emotional competencies such as self-confidence, initiative, persistence, and the ability to persuade.” Creating a collaborative and creative environment requires both left and right brain thinking, and this book is repository of activities that stimulate both parts of the brain.

Pros
The book can be easily revised without having to republish it, and revisions can be offered at low or no cost to buyers of the e-book. You can easily print just the section or activity you want (see Cons for the drawbacks of printing the whole book) and use the search capability of Adobe Acrobat Reader (Edit > Find). I wanted to use activities with this quote in mind, “Crayons—a bowl of ideas waiting to happen.” I searched "Crayons" and came up withsixactivities mentioning them.

You can write comments and collaborate with other trainers if you haveAdobe Acrobat 7 Professional. If something doesn’t work for you, you can keep changing it until it does and share with peers. You can also take the activity you want and insert it into your training manual.

At the end of each activity and in the appendix, there is a list of contributors you can contact—it’s like creating your own learning community.

Cons
It’s an e-book, and one the biggest problems is that you can use a lot of ink printing nearly 300 pages. When you factor in the use of ink, paper, and the wear and tear on your printer, it ends up being twice the cost of the original USD $48.99 price. (I was told that if you go to a printing company like Kinko's, the cost to print is minimal. I checked with Kinko's, and the cost to print 265 pages plus 3-hole punch is CAD $26.50 plus taxes.)

There is no matrix linking the exercises to personal learning style, art form, and multiple intelligences used in the activities. I would also like to see a matrix of the skills that these activities showcase, e.g., communication and presentations skills, teamwork and interpersonal skills, managing and organizing skills, and critical and thinking skills.

The contents page listings should be hyperlinked to the appropriate activity, the list of activities on the first page of each chapter with each activity, and the list of contributors to their websites.

Recommendation
It (almost) goes without saying that no company, large or small, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission of their company and understand how to achieve it collaboratively. Top innovative companies already know what CEO’s and top managers realized from a recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: innovation and creativity are critical to the future success of their companies. To compete in this fast globalizing world, people with higher cognitive and affective thinking skills need to be hired.

We as educators can do our part. The creative and innovative process is all about the attitude, energy, and enthusiasm we put into it to make it happen. We can look at Orchestrating Collaboration at Work as just another book of training activities, or, as one of the Fisher Price Toys ads suggests, the opportunity to play, laugh, and grow. Thomas Huxley once said, “The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood with you into maturity.” It takes one little spark of inspiration to breathe life into whatever we do. That is competitive advantage built one individual at a time.

Orchestrating Collaboration at Work Rating