Leadership and the Creative EconomyMACE Kingston

FAO: Miguel Imas

Project: The Toy Box

By: Lucia FroudStudent Number: K1163518

Open question to be developed individually by the student: Compose a theatre script, story, visual or any other art expression (or combination of all) that deals with creative leadership and its place in the creative economy. This must be an original, analytical and reflective piece of analysis within the 4,000 word limit.

Note. This is a creative and imaginative free question. Thus, if you provide a series of images or video short story or a play, please do remember to write their significance (theoretically and methodologically) for the specific topic of your discussion (minimum 2,000 words).

When I was young, there was a glorious mural painted on my bedroom wall. My father is a stained glass window maker and used it as an outlet for all of his sketches that never made it into glass. Above my bed there was a ship, battling against some Hokusai-esque waves and I would go to bed dreaming of the people on board and the far off places they would sail to. Upon reflection, it is interesting that I automatically assumed the ship had more than one person on it, and little did my parents realise that from this early age they were instilling in me a sense of team work and comradery. .

As a symbol of leadership it is a powerful one, after all, a large ship like that could simply not serve its primary function without a dedicated crew, and it is particularly applicable to modern ideas of creative leadership within the creative economy. Long has there been a deviation from traditional ideas of a hierarchical system; The sector places much more value on redefining the sometimes antagonistic relationship between the economy and creativity by emphasising ‘shared learning’ and critically evaluating constraints on free thinking, in order to realise creative potential. (Imas, 2003)

How fantastic! A free flowing portal of ideas, experiences and values is a far cry from the polyester suits, board rooms, hushed budget meetings , and ‘speak no evil’ philosophy of today’s working world. An idea both as chaotic and idyllic as the ‘Play-Doh’ placidity of a nursery school, before we were slammed into standardised testing, and told that you “must not share the answers” because that would be cheating. You do not own that parrot-fashioned answer. Suddenly in a creative environment, this ethos no longer fits. Perhaps, this is what creative leadership is all about. Perhaps we need to awaken our uninhibited inner child in order to be a creative leader? Let’s share the answers; run down the corridor and not eat our vegetables, unless we are standing on our head.

‘Toy Box Leadership: Leadership Lessons from the Toys you Loved as a Child’ is a book I first read whilst completing my undergraduate dissertation and the premise is simple; the most important leadership lessons are learned as kids, through the simplest of sources- toys ( Hunter Jr. 2008) It is suggested that the toys that we played with as children, have already taught us all we need to know about the secrets of successful leadership, and if applied correctly are more powerful that any of the latest fads and fashions. With chapters entitled ‘Yo-Yo: Creativity; It only happens when you let go’ and ‘Little Green Army Men: Strategy; Success is in the setup’, every toy acts as an accessible analogy and allows us to travel back in time to when our problems were simple and unclouded by our environment.

As much as I enjoyed the constructs in this book, the problem that I have found is that it does not all seem to be applicable across all sectors, and certainly not to the creative

industries. Most of the examples of toys that the authors have chosen, for example, Lego Bricks, the slinky dog, the Yo-Yo, are either designed to be played with alone or there is only one way to play with them, which does not allow for any flexibility or the creation of something new. It has been easy for the authors to make this connection, as children playing with toys are in the most exhaustive example of a hierarchical leadership structure there is, the education system, however, this does not help us when talking about facilitating the creative industries. In order for the thinking behind the book to become valid to them, it needed to move away from two dogmatic preconceptions; that all management is leadership; and that leadership can be ascribed or achieved. In actual fact, I believe that the name of the box should be changed to ‘Toy Box Management’, in which case I would have no further criticism.

For this project, I decided to challenge the badly defined presumptions in ‘Toy Box Leadership’, in order to make the theory applicable to the creative economy. I wanted to look at the ideas of creating narratives, and that the ideas of leadership cannot be fixed; whenever we open the ‘box’ that so many try and fit creative leadership in to, it bursts open producing a new result each time.

It was my idea to creative a toy box of my own, but be selective about what was inside, and then use it to conduct an experiment using an adult and a child, in order to analyse how they examine and play with it.

The first stage was to construct the object, and there were a number of choices and specific factors from my research that determined the outcome of this. I wanted the box to be uncomplicated and easily opened, to portray the difficulty in squashing the ideas of Leadership into a confined space, as an ever evolving entity. It also needed to have nostalgic qualities, so wood was the only fitting medium to use and it was assembled by using a ‘comb joint’, considered by some to be an outdated technique, each side slots together, achieved by using hand tools. This was lengthy process but worth it for the final result. Any calligraphy on the surface was carefully chosen from the old posters in my father’s stained glass window shop, and also a stylised version of the ship that adorned my wall would be the main illustrative feature.

The box was pivotal in highlighting my thoughts on leadership, however, the success of my experiment was really dependent on what was created for inside. I found fault with the use of Lego bricks in the chapter ‘Building begins with connections’ (pp.1-20) because although the chapter starts by discussing how crucial connections are, freedom to build is emphasized to a greater degree, and Lego has a very specific way of working. Building blocks are as crucial in play as they are in Leadership; however I wanted to create some, where their use cannot be assumed and has not been dictated to the person playing.

The blocks that I decided to make are three centimetres square, and wooden, which have been highly sanded so the surface is smooth enough to give them fluidity against each other. No further decoration was applied, not even colour, as I wanted to move away from the idea of predestined uses. For example, if had painted some blocks blue, those blocks may never be used by some for building a garden, with trees and flowers; the possibilities should be endless, as in creative thought.

The draw string bag that contained the blocks was made from the appliqué of old T-shirts into the owl character that ornamented the front. The owl, in fables and children’s literature often regarded as a wise characterisation, and here used as a symbol of facilitating whatever creative expression arises from the simple act of piling cubes of wood on top of one another. I also enjoy the questions that can be derived from this; is the Owl a symbolic leader? Or a symbolic manager? Is it the creative thinker looking for a leader to make some sense of its blocks? What do the blocks represent? This feeling of possibility born from ambiguity is what I was striving to achieve.

The static ‘Jerk-in-the-Box’ represents the stereotypical narcissistic “leader” I have assumed that the ‘leader’ is male because of the inherent inequalities still present in the creative economy (Sternberg, 2003) He has slicked back hair, a once expensive shirt, a puppet like appearance, and is pointing to you, a gesture signifying the broken promises from hours of

management speak and manipulation. He is sprung as any Jack-In-The-Box should be however, the springs are suspended and inflexible. He does not function as He should, and therefore is not a toy designed to be played with, more a looming presence to be ignored; walk away, choose not to play with him and you be the unofficial voice.

The final childhood artefact is the pop-up book, which illustrates the fable of ‘The Bundle of Sticks’, an Aesop’s Fable, translated by G.F. Townsend (About.com, 2008) A quotation that summarises my microcosm of leadership quite pertinently is “It is quite possible… that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology” (Noam Chomsky in Lodge, 2002: 10). When a parent reads a bedtime story to a child, it is not purely about literacy skills, it is about developing imagination, empathy and relationships with a narrative.

The fable I chose, when translated is no more that 150 words long, however it carries such a strong moral, ‘unity gives strength’ that within the confines of this study, it needed to be exhibited in some way. I have always felt that Pop-Ups books are an interesting way of asking children to bridge the gap between the two dimensionality of a book, with the three dimensions of imaginative manifestations. I did not want the mechanisms of the book to detract from the simple words, so I have only sort to make the bundle of sticks the feature, and the action is placed upon the action words in the narrative. The fable a perfect example of a leadership story used to generate interpretation, meaning, and experience and the final addition to my toy box.

The premise of my experiment was simple. I asked a Mother (Hannah Thomas, 29) and Son (George Thomas, 3) to enter a room, and sit down at a table where there would be an object (later revealed to be my Toy Box et al) in front of them. I observed their behaviour over a thirty minute time period and the results were at once unexpected but explainable.

They approached the table, mother leading son, and after looking at the box for several minutes, sat down in front of it. What I had noticed about George is that He was constantly

asking questions. “Is this a Toy Box, Mummy?” “What’s inside?” “Can we open it?”As I had not necessarily instructed them to do so, Hannah looks to me after this last question for clarification, however I say nothing.

An extract form my table of notes is below:

George HannahEnters room asking lots of questions Enters room and leads George to table as she has been instructedAsks Hannah to help him onto the chair Places George on table and then sits beside him.Asks if He can open the box. Hannah unsure and looks at me. I remain silent.Opens box after 7 minutes. Looks shocked when George opens the box however lets him.Places all toys out on the table in front of him. Answers Georges questions about what each 'thing' is.Looks at Jack-In-The-Box first. Tells George that it must be broken and that she will look after him.After no argument, He looks at the book. Opens book and reads it to George.Asks questions about why the Pop Ups are there. Hannah says the illustrations are scary!!George tells broken story about when He broke his pencil in half. Hannah continues to look at illustrations.George breaks away and starts playing with blocks.He piles the blocks on top of the toy box as if cargo for a ship. Hannah says He needs to be careful because He might scratch the paint.

So, what did I learn from this experiment? Mostly I learned that Hannah was so constricted by social values and ideas of etiquette that it almost stopped her from experiencing the Toy Box at all. She was nervous about opening the box as she had not been previously instructed to do so by someone that she deemed in her peer group. She also confiscated the ‘broken’ Jack-In-The-Box, without looking at options of how to fix it, or diagnosing any problem. Asking George to not put blocks on the box in case He damaged it was also interesting when considering the relationships between parents and children compared to managers and leaders.

While Hannah led George to the table, helped him onto the chair and answered his questions, there was no innovation there; they were playing their roles as Mother and Son perfectly. However Hannah appeared the manager in this situation. Mother certainly knows best in day to day life, she does not necessarily know best in play, and play is the most natural honest state of childhood.

George however, with his young childhood naivety, asked all of the important questions, and although because of his age He still needed help with physicality in this case, He showed initiative, understanding, experimentation and innovation. He used the toy box as part of his block construction; He wanted to how Pop-up books work and also empathised with the main moral of the story by making a connection to breaking a coloured pencil.

George is a definite creative leader.

Bibliography

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