The Why
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Our culture mythologises creativity while, simultaneously, putting up barriers which prevent people from reaching their creative potential.

As much as “innovation” has been put on a pedestal, enshrined in corporate vision statements and funded by private, state and transnational investors, most companies still do the thing they have always done, in the way they have always done it. We keep hanging on to the coattails of the status quo, for good psychological reasons – fear of failure, various biases – but also because most people, most of the time, do not really understand the direct connection between business innovation, imagination and creativity.

We applaud the achievements of star artists, musicians, designers, architects but that is as far as our appreciation, and our understanding of creativity usually go. The process is reduced to admiration of talent and awards for spectacular success. Creativity is for the chosen few. With talent. And special abilities. It’s just not a thing for average people. Right? Wrong.

We celebrate creativity and applaud the achievements of those star artists, designers and entrepreneurs, but when it comes down to it we accept the new and exciting only once it has been well tested by others.

In the meantime, instead of trying the untried, dreaming up the new, we continue to attend fabulous events and reading blog posts by thought leaders, who continue to tell us that innovation is a good thing, and we must all do it. Yay! It really is like putting lipstick on a pig.

It’s a wonderful idiom “putting lipstick on a pig.” Trying to make something that is too difficult and too ugly seem better by pretending that if you put gloss on it, you’ve done the hard work. Lots of effort, lots of shine, but practically no real effect.

Somehow, putting lipstick on the pig has become the central activity to such a degree that we no longer see the pig, just the lipstick.

If a business is to survive the next five years and then thrive for the subsequent decade, assuming it is in an industry that has a future and that it is run by competent professionals, it has to draw on the collective creativity of all of its people, and all of its customers. It has to see fishing in this collective pool of ideas as a strategic asset, not a thing you do on team building weekends. Can you remember the last time when you spent a week working on something completely new, doing things in ways which were different from the usual ways of doing things, connecting with people outside of your normal circle of colleagues?

Creativity is in part about connecting what is in our heads with ideas from “the edge” and seeing patterns and linkages which may not be apparent to anybody else at the time.

What is required are ways to release the inherent creativity of your people and a system which builds on people’s natural strengths by centering on the psychology of individuals and groups. It needs to be simple in its fundamentals, and a “natural” thing to run. The point of innovation thinking is to allow people in your organisation to have insights about what can be done better, with a system in place to inspire them to do so, collect those insights when they come, and work with them.

Creative professionals have very real value to the business world just beyond that boundary line where art and commerce ordinarily meet.

The value which creative professionals can bring to the table, in addition to providing their specialised services, is in assisting executives in being able to look into the future and to train their people to work in this quickened, confusing, rapidly changing digitally transformed context that surrounds us. Creative professionals can answer the call when someone asks “take me, where I haven’t been.”

Creativity is not about finding new ways to put lipstick on a pig but about ways to make the pig a better pig.

This is the reason why I do what I do – or rather a number or reasons, all pulling in the same direction.

This text is an edited version of a talk I have given several times at conferences large and small, including gatherings of hundreds of bankers, and a dozen or so telecommunication executives. The message is always the same – to innovate you need new ideas, to get new ideas you need people and places you do not necessarily meet or see every day, and the best people here are artists and creatives of all kinds.

19 Jan

Posted at 07:16h in Uncategorized

(This was originally a guest blog at Amati & Associates.)

Innovation thinking cannot be deployed, it must be cultivated, and in order to be cultivated, it needs to be embraced, not imposed. A properly executed and well communicated innovation thinking programme which starts out gradually and lets everyone become used to the idea can change the mindset of entire departments, shifting the course of the company as a whole.

Over time, the engagement needle can be moved back into the green. Again, peer support has been shown to work wonders in this area, and your mycelians can be expected to provide that support, guiding people towards tools and practices which they will use to build meaning into their work. We have already seen that the majority of workers do not feel engaged with their work, but what about a fifth of them feeling “actively disengaged?” A recent Gallup survey of 1500 people in Australia returned just that result. This means tens of billions in waste and lost profits now, but what will it mean in a few years if the number climbs? Large companies may fight low morale by throwing ever increasing resources at recruitment, or buying expertise from outside providers. Small and medium companies, however, do not have quite the same momentum or cash reserves. Their journey between plummeting employee morale and going to the wall will likely be a short one. Substantial change is required.

From none other than Geoffrey Moore, the author of Crossing the Chasm, comes this call to action, quoted in the BBVA publication Reinventing the Company in the Digital Age,:
“Abandon the notion of a hierarchical model where the middle manager takes instruction from above to deploy below and takes data from below to inform above. Instead, position the middle manager as master of the interfaces with the customer and the partners, empowering them to detect, analyse and address mismatches through negotiation, adjustment and reform.”

We can see this going on already, in companies whose leadership see the value in empowering people to take ownership of projects, customer segments or products. It makes them more effective and it makes their job far more interesting, which does wonders for engagement. Ultimately it leads to what Professor Haim Mendelson of Stanford Business School calls “high organisational IQ” – a quality which is fundamental if your company is to be a nimble, learning organisation which confidently faces the demands of a dynamically changing marketplace and the broader environment.

Companies with “high organisational IQ” find it easier to recruit the right people. Considering the level of competition for good employees, we can draw a sharply descending, long-tailed curve to illustrate “employee interest”, within any group of companies. The well known, high-profile, innovative organisations would be placed high and to the left, at the stratospheric end of the curve. They generate high employee interest and probably do not suffer from a shortage of motivated candidates. Along the other end, the flat long tail is filled with companies that are probably not any more boring than any of the others around them but are certainly not any more interesting, either. We would be right in assuming that they do not have a throng of the best and brightest beating a path to their door. Companies that may not be the sexy beasts but are nonetheless great, forward thinking places to work occupy the middle ground, the slippery bend of the curve, and that is where it gets interesting, and thick with opportunity. The company as a thought leader, would that be a comfortable hat to wear? “This is a cool company, they do exciting things there.” Isn’t that an excellent thought to plant in the minds of people? Part of the mycelians remit must be to diligently communicate the good and interesting things going on inside the company through their social channels; not as vapid PR waffle, but as frontline reports from the life of a creative, dynamic organisation – living proof of the company taking courageous, bold steps to prepare itself for the future, and communicating this to potential recruits.

28 Nov

Posted at 09:02h in Uncategorized

I was asked to keynote at What’s Next in Vilnius – a conference for creatives and people generally associated with the creative industries. My people 🙂

In preparation, the organised wanted to know what I thought about where ideas came from, and what they were worth. Here is the, slightly edited, interview.

When you need an idea, what kind of actions do you take to keep generating better ideas?

There are three suggestions I give clients, and – taking my own medicine – use myself when stuck for ideas: the right environment, the right level of concentration and the right amount of data and distraction.

Given that in order to have a few good ideas you need to have a great many ideas, it is necessary to get into a mode of thinking has been best described as “open” – your mind is free to wonder, synapses are clicking and buzzing with connections, there are different kinds of inputs (music, visuals, text, nature), and the environment is controlled so as to provide “Goldilocks” level of stimulus – not too much, not too little, just right. White noise is great for this – though it has its own problems, and doesn’t always work. Cafe noise, at around 45 dB and without intelligible conversations can help and is the second reasons why many people like to work in cafes. Open fields work for some, cluttered studios for others, while there are people who like empty rooms – as with everything to do with creativity the preferred environment is an individual thing.

For me a fundamental building block is music, and the choice depends on what I’m doing. If it’s conceptual work with research, concentration, writing, generally working with words, it’s ambient or instrumental jazz. If I’m doing layouts or working with visuals (form rather than text), it’s grunge or fusion and usually rather loud. This is just something I have noticed – and it works for me. It is also an excellent reason to explain having a CD library of over 2000 titles… That’s my excuse. If I’m working on time-based media, video or audio, then silence is the order of the say, and my earphones serve more as earplugs.

Lack of interruptions is absolutely vital. Ask any creative professional and at the top of their list of things required to get work done is “for everyone to leave me alone while I’m working.” Open space offices spell death to creativity, unless people can enclose themselves in their own space, usually through headphones. No calls, no emails, no tweets – concentration is the lubricant that keeps the creative wheels turning and the glue that sticks various ideas together. Ideas are precious, fleeting things and have a way of starting to disappear as soon as they come up.

Finally, input – usually the rule is “as broad and as varied as possible.” Input comes in two forms – data and random, both of which are vital for ideas to keep flowing. Data is simple – this is all the stuff you need so as to be able to get into the work, understand what you’re doing, delve deep into the subject. This is of course highly subjective and depends on the type of work you do. A musician will have a very different set of data from a hardware engineer. Random is more interesting, and also more universal. I very often walk to my library, open a random book case and pick out a book that has nothing to do with whatever I’m working on at the time, in order to “ping a different perspective”. This can just as easily be books of, and about, mythology, or collections of photographs of graffiti. There is also the visual random, which for me is very important. My study is lined with photographs, paintings and prints – which drives my wife nuts, by the way, it is just too busy for her. It works for me, since I’m able to use them as “unrelated objects to stare into while thinking” – there is probably a word for that in some ancient language that is about to go extinct, and we’ll never know…

But I digress. These are three of the key components of what makes creativity flow. There are a number more, which are just as important, but require a lot more explanation. The point really is to find out what mix of these works for you, in what proportions, and in what circumstance. Just like each of us has a different definition of the perfect cocktail.

Without which innovations couldn’t you live nowadays?

We need to define the term “innovations” since it is a most misused and, therefore, misunderstood word. I’m assuming you don’t mean such innovations as vaccines, antibiotics, motorised transport or radio, which of course were major innovations in their time, and now life would be very, very different without them. Technological innovation is a constant process which has been speeding up at an exponential rate over the last fifty years or so. If we’re talking about current areas of innovation rather than individual products then I suspect, like many people, I would find it difficult to function effectively without my communication devices, be it my smartphone or tablet. Could I live without them? Yes of course, and I would love it, sitting on a beach, reading physical books, getting up to make a phone call on a landline every once in a while, but because technology has been speeding up, life has been speeding up, so in order to keep up – if indeed we want to keep up – we have to remain current with the technology we use.

You in 2025 – where are you, what are you doing, what is your enviroment (let your imagination flow)?

Letting my imagination flow is what I do for a living but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it gets any easier to imagine what our lives will be like in ten years’ time. I would hate to be a science fiction writer now – by the time your book is on the shelves, half the things you dreamed up are in production, instead of being “in the future.”

First, work. Given that I am a knowledge worker and my consulting work happens at the intersection of empathy, communication and technology, I assume I will not have been replaced by artificial intelligence quite yet. I expect that my work will consist ever more of learning, filtering information and making sense of it, drawing strategic insights and delivering them to a large body of clients worldwide. How these will be delivered is another question. Right now, it is mostly in person. You can’t beat actual physical presence. As a partner in a video streaming business, I am able to reach global audiences with high quality programming right now, but I expect in ten years’ time we will have moved on with the technology we use, and it will be closer to tele-presence than it is now. I expect I will have an AI assistant who will be tuned precisely to search for information and present it to me in a way optimised for my limited-bandwidth human brain to handle easily. The same assistant will likely have learned my presentation style and will be able to create visuals on the fly as I write my texts. In short, technology will help me get more done faster and better. The work that I do best, thinking and talking, will be augmented by research and assembly done by AI.

Where will I, and my family, live in ten years’ time? That is possibly the wrong question to ask since, given the nature of my work, I can live anywhere. Where will I choose to live, and how? The how is easy, since I like a simple life, close to nature, and close enough to civilisation. That will not change. As for the where, that is probably impossible to answer right now, given that the geopolitical situation may change several times, with places worth living in becoming hostile, and then turning back to “normal”. Ten years is a long time from that perspective.

How much do ideas cost? And how can you assess the value ideas?

The cost of ideas is the cost of the time and effort required to bring them to the surface, connect the various threads and elements and present them in a fashion that is understandable for those outside of the idea generating process. If, for example, I work with a five person team from a client company, and we get three good ideas in a workshop, that means the cost of each idea is my fee for the preparation and the two days, plus their internal staff costs, plus any expenses, divided by three, but of course the truth is far more complicated.

Picasso once made a simple line drawing while talking to a journalist, who asked him how much he would sell it for. To that, the master gave some fairly large figure. “But it took you twenty seconds to draw it”, said the journalist. “Forty years and twenty seconds”, said Picasso. Which, by the way, points to the fact that our continuing functioning stuck in “charge for time” mode, really needs reassessing, but that is a related but different question. The point is, ideas happen at the confluence of trains of thought. They are fed by a constant stream of inputs, only some of which we may be consciously aware. For them to come at a predestined time and location is really, really difficult, and requires concentrated effort. So the cost of ideas really consists of the cost of all our combined education and experience, divided by the number of ideas we may end up with.

As for their value, well, ideas are a dime a dozen, as they say. It is the execution of an idea that makes it important or even interesting. This means, assessing ideas is just as important as having them. Ultimately, of course, we can only measure the effect of ideas that have been put into practice – and while it is tempting to put a number on an idea which appears to be successful right now, only history will tell which ideas have been “good”, which “bad”, and which just moderately useful but without bringing any major change. But that is possibly too-broad a perspective. On a more practical level, it is rare to find people who as as good as assessing ideas as they are at having them. When they do, they find that their minds work in a different mode each time. The “open” mode, I mentioned before is what is required for ideas to flow. Assessing them, figuring out what to do with them and how, letting the mental dominoes fall and see where they go requires a more analytical approach, and that probably means slight (or substantial) changes to the team of people working on the question. Did I mention that creativity is a social activity? Well, there you go. While we may wax lyrical about the lone artist in the tower, that is true for a very narrow band of activity. Modigliani was probably alone when he painted, although he still needed models. Surrounding ourselves with a small group of diverse individuals is a recipe for creativity to happen spontaneously. The emphasis there is on “small” and “diverse”, by the way. Check out “Kelly Johnson’s rules” for real practical advice.

In the end, ideas are worth what someone is willing to pay for them, whatever we use as currency. For commercial uses, crowdsourcing of feedback is a great tool, and there are plenty of tools to do that. If your idea, turned into something useful – be it real or virtual, social or commercial or both – is useful to people, they will soon tell you.

06 Oct

Posted at 12:41h in Uncategorized

As we all know, presentations can be either informative, interesting and inspiring or bland, boring and just plain bad. (Couldn’t resist the alliteration, eh.) 

What is interesting is that given the fact that both the presenters and the audience are often drawn from the same pool of people, and no-one likes to attend boring presentations, why does it continue to happen? Doesn’t everyone already know what makes a dreadful presentation and what to avoid when making one?

I thought I’d ask for input and the results, sure enough, confirm what we all know to be true. The question remains therefore, if we all know it to be true why does it continue to happen, but the answer to that one lies more in the realm of psychology rather than presentation, and that is beyond this writer’s brief.

 

So I constructed a SurveyMonkey survey – set up in such a way as to first get an unprompted insight into what people thought were the Deadly Presentation Sins to be Avoided at All Costs and only then to quantify how bad they thought those Sins were.

TLDR? : We know what makes a good presentation, and we know what makes a dreadful one. Steering towards the first and away from the second must, therefore, be only a matter of practice.

So, to the results. The spontaneous “top of mind” responses are probably most interesting since they are the best reflection of what people know is distracting or annoying. There was a lot of repetition – it’s not exactly a surprise that we all find the same things annoying. So, to save you wading through columns of identical entries, I’ve culled the responses to those which best give the general sympathies:

– making this ‘yyyy’ sound to fill the small pauses during the talk

– being in a rush

– dreadful slides (full of text, bad design, colors)

– bad content structure: plenty of obsolete information, no clear path through

– apathy – if you’re not excited, we won’t be either

– reading lists of things off the screen

– mumbling

– not making eye contact

– reading from the slides

– too much information on slides (ie, writing it all out)

– using PPT when other methods could be better

– aggressive backgrounds (any coloured backgrounds basically);

– ‘volatile’ eye contact

– no conclusion at the end of the presentation

– too much info on PPT

– reading word for word from PPT

– not knowing their audience

– reading their slides

– standing with their back to the audience, facing their slides

– having lots of dense text/figures on their slides

– looking at the screen

– mumbling

– crap slides

We can see a pattern emerging there, right?

 

The numerical results are also interesting. All of the following Sins got a high annoyance value so I won’t bore you with details as we can take from it that all of them are to be avoided. The three most annoying Sins, according to the number of votes, are:

 

Reading from notes (everyone said they would stay in the auditorium but do other work)

 

Too much info per slide (80% said they would tweet “this sux” or tell people how bad it was afterwards)

 

Bullet point hell (40% said they would leave the auditorium and 40% said they would tell others how bad it was)

 

Then, flying in close formation, ie. given a very similar number of votes:

 

Mumbling, lots of umm, aaah, yyyy, errr

Flashy colours

Turning towards screen

Type too small

Boring clipart

Annoying transitions

Technically bad photos

Bad background colours / illegible text

A shower of arrows

 

Now for the good news. It is equally clear what makes a good presentation, all other things being equal. The responders were asked: “What things can a presenter do, apart from actually learning and practicing the presentation, to make you pay attention. Please rank the following in terms of importance.” (These were multiple clik answers, ie. they do not tally up to 100%)

 

Half the respondents placed stepping away from the podium and connecting with the audience as being “absolutely vital”

Two thirds said that not looking at the screen was “absolutely vital”

And, at the top of the list, a whopping 83% said that reducing the amount of text on each slide was “absolutely vital”.

As “Really good to have but not fundamental to my taking things in” people rated the following practices:

Stop reading from notes

Shorten the presentation as much as possible

Simplify each slide’s graphics

Pay attention to the microphone and volume

Remember that no photo is better than a bad photo

Very few people clicked on any values below that which, for interest’s sake, were “Can live without it” and “Not important.” The moral of the story? It’s all important. Every aspect of giving a presentation to communicate anything is as vital as the others or else the whole thing falls to bits.

Finally, responders were asked to add a comment in case I had missed anything. Several suggested variations on “where possible, make it personal: tell a story rather than overloading us with data / facts”. One response stands out as, well, quirky: “A friend of mine, who is a marvellous speaker and presentation-maker, uses this technique at the beginning: before he says anything he puts up a big, strange eye which is turning upside down for 3 to 5 seconds, with a cracking sound. It is really good to make the crowd pay attention.”

While I personally would not suggest such anatomical approach every time, catching the attention of the audience is certainly required before they even beging to think about listening and then, finally, taking anything in. I remember, with some mirth, one presentation coach who began her spiel by standing up on a chair and pretending to eat an A4 sheet of paper. (Blank, 80gsm standard office kind…) Her point? People need to pay attention before they will actually listen. No, she did not advocate that everyone did the same thing. It was just to make a point. Perhaps we need a variation on the strange cracking eye…

We know what makes a good presentation. We’ve all seen them. So let’s resist the demons which taunt us and push us to keep committing the same sins even though we know it’s bad for us.

23 Oct

Posted at 16:43h in Uncategorized

Some projects feel like they really are world-changing. Architect Mark Krawczynski and his small team have created a concept for a building that creates more energy than it uses through a range of renewable energy sources.

14 Oct

Posted at 08:58h in Uncategorized

A little while ago I was shooting in Palma de Mallorca, for a new yachting book project.

On my last evening there, having finished up my work and packed up my lights, I went for a walk through the old town, so as to satisfy that time-honoured tradition of visiting bookshops with no particular end in mind. (As it happened I found a book as a present for my brother but that’s not the cool thing – though that book was actually a lovely facsimile edition of an early Plato translation.)

The cool thing was that this English gentleman, having sold up in the UK, had moved the entire antiquarian book inventory box by box across to Palma and set up a delightful shop in a lane in the old town. Now, for the cool, cool thing: while browsing I spotted a rather familiar cover.

“Legends of the Land” is now out of print in New Zealand and since I only have a handful of copies left, I was tempted to buy it! What a well-travelled little book this one was. I signed it, of course, and left my new friend pondering whether or not to double the price on the spot. I guess I’ll have to find out next time I’m there, probably to shoot another yacht.

14 Aug

Posted at 12:40h in Uncategorized

We are more scared of public speaking than we are, apparently, of may other things – real or imagined. This fear is a natural result of our biological history and cultural conditioning, but it does not need to be the defining factor in our presentations. The dread of being judged, of stepping in front of your peers, can be conquered. With practice, it is entirely possible to overcome it by remembering that every presentation is less about you than it is about the people you are talking to. And there is no magic involved!

The fundamental point to remember is that public speaking is not simply speaking in public. A presentation is a particular kind of communication and is governed by its own rules. It is not an opportunity to dump all available information in the audience’s lap. It is a very different discipline from written reports or other kinds of communication and it is not a chance to prove how mind-numbingly clever you are, unless you actually want to numb a few minds and turn them off the content of your talk.

An effective presentation is of course about the right content but it is also, in large part, about skillful treatment of the audience (psychology), beautiful, impactful and informative slides (design) and also a bit of showmanship. A good presentation balances all of those elements and the result you want is that the audience walks away remembering the main points – the essence of what you were talking about. (If they want more information, you should make it easy for them to get it but it is not your job to cram ALL the information into your presentation.)

Concentrate on the key message, repeat it a few times in different forms and remember the old adage : Less is More.

So here are the seven principles of effective presenting :

1. Start strong. You need to set the mood, grab the attention, maybe even wake them up if the previous speaker excelled at the skill of putting people to sleep with a boring talk. (And the chances of that are, as we know, unfortunately high.)

2. Keep it simple. Of course, if you are presenting detailed data or offering complex insights to people who are familiar with the subject then do not dumb it down but generally it is more effective to prune the amount of information so as to keep to the main points which they can remember and use. Overload leads to only one thing – the audience forgetting everything you told them as soon as they leave the room.

3. Pace yourself. Figure out the best speed at which you need to talk, within the time you are given. Do not rush madly through one half of the talk only to realise that you have no material left for the second half. This can be only achieved with proper preparation and several run-throughs so you are familiar with the talk enough to know when to speed up, when to slow down for effect, when to pause to make a point.

4. Use Emotions. People may forget the details but they will remember the feeling. If you are giving a motivational talk, you want them to walk away, well, motivated! If you are giving a sales presentation, you want them to recall the gist of why they would want to buy the product, and not necessarily all of its features.

5. Trust design. Principles of good design can – and should – be learned with practice. Use the tools at your disposal : colours, type, graphics, balance and so on. Learn the basics of the craft and you will be able to lean on it, as you would on a good friend!

6. Tell a story. Nothing captivates the audience like a good narrative. This does not mean necessarily : “Once upon a time…” It means getting personal with your information. If it’s a business presentation this is just as important – people want to know WHY they should care about the thing you are selling. Take them by the hand and tell them a good story.

7. Practice. Practice. Practice. A famous musician was once asked by a traveller lost in Manhattan, “excuse me, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?” The answer was: “practice young man, practice, practice, practice.”

And Master Bruce Lee is believed to have said “I’m not afraid of the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks. I’m afraid of the man who has practiced the same kick 10,000 times.” Enough said.

Here’s to effective public speaking!

 

09 Jul

Posted at 20:05h in Uncategorized

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far away…  Some time in April 1996 I began to photograph the places of worship of some of the lesser known of New Zealand’s many ethnic communities. As an immigrant in a land of immigrants, I wanted to see how ethnic groups preserved their own ways while surrounded by a powerful mainstream culture.

For my own part, having lived in four different countries in the space of 20 years, I had found that the processes of adaptation, while providing priceless insights and experiences, had left me feeling bereft of the comforting continuum of living among people of the same background. I was curious to see how others had dealt with that sense of loss.
There was also the hint of a spiritual quest the perhaps naive belief that beneath all the varied rituals and doctrines I encountered I might find enough common elements to justify some claim for a universality of human experience.

“Truth is one, but sages call it by many names,” say the Hindus. Prayer certainly takes several forms, and the faces of God are many, but the starting point for each person seems to be the same that of wanting to touch a fragment of understanding of the Divine.

Diversity is often interpreted by outsiders in terms of clichés “Indians have arranged marriages,” “Jews perform circumcisions,” “Buddhists chant a lot, don’t they?” Such stock responses, although in themselves not necessarily a bad thing (they function as a kind of mental shorthand) become a grave limitation when they are accepted as informed opinion. Even limited understanding has to be based on more than common preconceptions. 

 

Joseph Campbell, one of the greatest students of the depths of ritual and belief, said that to study the religion of others is not just good but actually necessary for one’s own spiritual progress. The religious scholar Ninian Smart added that “the voyage into other folks’ beliefs and practices may turn out to be a journey into your neighbourhood. Cities are microcosms of the whole world. This is an added reason to know something of others.”

It could be argued that appreciating, if not understanding, our neighbours and their cultural differences is no longer a luxury or a fancy of the classically educated but a prerequisite for peaceful co-existence in an increasingly complex world.

Sakya Trizin, a Tibetan lama who visited New Zealand recently, said: “It is important to keep every tradition alive as part of the world, to complete the world.” There is an innate attractiveness in the idea that each culture complements all others to form a full picture of humanity. A Chinese sutra, the Hua-yen Ching, describes a mythical jewel net in which every stone reflects all of the others a clear reference to the interconnectedness of all things.

For scattered ethnic communities the multiple diasporas of the modern age preserving the belief systems and religious practices that amount to each group’s common heritage therefore has a significance beyond just group affirmation. Affirmation, though, is reason enough. The very belonging to something larger than oneself as a member of a congregation and, thus, as a member of a faith may be taken for granted “at home” but becomes of vital importance in an immigrant context.

Often the place of worship serves as a point of community focus by default: by bringing together one’s compatriots for the purpose of worship, we preserve our culture far from ancestral lands.

The Tsi Ming Temple in Greenlane is a good example. Prior to its construction in 1990, the Auckland Chinese Buddhist community used to meet in people’s homes. The temple has not only given the community a focal point, it has enlarged the congregation, says Rusty Rolfe, a New Zealander of European descent who is married to a Chinese woman.

“A new great hall was built in 1995, but now even that is too small on some festivals,” he says. “Interestingly, the temple sees far more men coming to services than in either Taiwan or Hong Kong, where most of the gatherings are made up of women. This is owing to New Zealand’s more relaxed work schedules and longer weekends.”

 

As well as offering regular prayer and meditation opportunities, the temple offers classes in vegetarian cooking and flower arranging, kung fu instruction by visiting sifus and two-way language courses English for new migrants and Mandarin for their children, who, growing up in an English-speaking environment, are likely to forget it.

Across in Balmoral, the experience of the Hindu community has been similar. Bharatiya Mandir, whose white gopuram towers above the surrounding villas and bungalows, was built by the organisers “with some trepidation,” says Keswa Lal, the temple’s social affairs officer. “Since the temple was built, the number of devotees has increased dramatically. To start with, we thought maybe a couple of hundred people would show up on major holidays. Now we can’t accommodate everyone. Sunday school started with three children we now have over 200.”

The temple serves Hindus who have arrived from Fiji, Sri Lanka and African countries, as well as India. “Some people, when they land here, are very lonely. We have had ones who were so depressed, they wanted to go back to where they came from, but when they found the temple and met everybody, made contact with people in their professions, say, their morale changed very quickly,” says Lal. “Sometimes we even try to offer marriage guidance,” he adds with a smile.

For many immigrants, the opportunity not commonly encountered in the mother country of meeting faith members from other countries and cultures is a real plus. The Muslim faith, in particular, unifies migrants from Africa, the Middle East, South-east Asia and elsewhere. After prayers, Bosnians, Turks, Indonesians and Africans stand around and talk about their families and jobs in English, in Anglo-Saxon/Polynesian New Zealand! It truly is a small world.

 

In countries such as New Zealand, whose populations are largely composed of migrants, rather than in the far more homogeneous nations of the Old World, it is substantially easier to seek out and meet people of other religious traditions. Whether by marriage or personal inclination, many European New Zealanders have chosen to embrace other faiths. The Muslim Converts Association in Auckland gains 50 to 100 new members each year, mostly New Zealand women who have married Muslim men, but also students of the faith making the final step in accepting it as a way of life. Sometimes entire families convert.

Nowhere is the infusion of converts from outside the immediate circle of migrants better witnessed than at a major puja (ritual) at the Tibetan temple in Kaukapakapa, north of Auckland. The tiny Tibetan community becomes virtually lost in the midst of the hundreds of European New Zealanders who have taken on the Buddhist way.

In the course of this work I was met with nothing but acceptance and hospitality, if mixed with healthy curiosity. Communities seemed eager to “show off” what they did as not being that different from what everyone else was up to, just dressed in different garb and playing a different tune.

A Muslim man, after prayers marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, gave me a bear hug and proclaimed that we were brothers. A Russian man welcomed me with a smile that lit up the evening sky at an Orthodox Christmas midnight mass, and a Jewish woman, seeing that I obviously knew no other soul at a Hanukkah gathering, brought me a bowl of fruit and introduced me to her family.

I watched the rising sun light up the face of the golden Buddha statue at the Karma Choling, the Tibetan temple of Kaukapakapa. The statue’s eyes had been painted in “opened” by the Dalai Lama himself.

 

Two hours’ travel south brought me to the Sikh temple outside Hamilton. Not much was going on, but the temple guardian welcomed me in for a cup of cardamom-scented tea anyway.

On another occasion, during a visit to Wellington, a short diversion from State Highway 1 at Stokes Valley brought a quiet afternoon’s reflection at the breathtakingly beautiful Buddhist monastery there.

I enjoyed spending time with people whose culture and religion seem to be a part of life, not apart from it. I felt that I was the only man alive to have spent time at a Chinese temple, a Hindu mandir and an Orthodox church all in the space of 24 hours.

In the end, the work itself became a yatra (pilgrimage). But rather than being one continuous progression, this one was composed of snatched moments, rosary beads of a few hours here and a day there threaded on to the daily run. Hindu men with earthy complexions and broad smiles, lighting incense. A slow procession of Thais, lining up to bathe the hands of a gathering of bhikkus (monks). Two Russian men, both with handlebar moustaches, chatting quietly outside their little Orthodox church. Tablas and harmonium played at a Krishna festival. Candles. Water. Sound. Silence.


03 Jul

Posted at 08:03h in Uncategorized

Conferences are “stuff” which serves many purposes for the World’s creative business elite. The best ones combine a high-octane dose of inspiration with a chance to gaze into crystal balls deftly handled by the high priests of this large amorphous circle, the designers and consultants who shape consumer dreams of tomorrow (or maybe ten or twenty years hence) and the technologists who, by stretching the horizons of technology with their vision write the software and invent the materials which will make it possible for those dreams to be turned into commercial reality.

A vital ingredient of this “stuff” is the building and care of personal connections which bind startup founders with performance artists, software developers with strategy consultants, eccentric investors with advertising gurus and sound designers with automotive engineers (and many more, besides.) This creative elite represents the advance guard of today’s business world and multi-disciplinary gatherings are its playground, research field, cross-pollination lab, parade ground, mating festival and ritual gathering of the tribe. 

Without those personal connections the strength of this group would be much diminished, its members reduced to a status of “content providers” or “graphic artists”, and the business world would be turning them into increasingly slavish completers of tasks – forgetting at its own peril that it is these very people who ensure its long term survival. (This endless struggle is one of the large ironies of the business world, but that is for another post.) With the personal connections in place, however, the group becomes the power train of tomorrow’s commercial world, and its members in turn hitch their own career wagons to it.

Having just had a chance to learn, horse-trade, story-swap, spark ideas, show off and party at the invitation of the organisers of MLOVE, I must confess a growing fondness, nay, weakness for small, highly focused but broad-ranging, well-run and intensely personal conferences. These gatherings tend to become a natural hub for the communities of like-minded individuals who come together in the gravitational pull of a promise of creative excellence, serendipity and commercial opportunity. I’m a junkie for high-grade conversation. There, I said it.

MLOVE is a mobile-centric conference but don’t let that fool you into thinking that it’s an event for Vodafone executives and handset manufacturers. Yes, they were there of course but “Mobile” is now the topic on the lips of power brokers, ad men and branding directors everywhere, and it has more to do with life than with technology, Not surprisingly, so did the conference.

The gathering takes place annually in a tastefully dilapidated castle a couple of hours south of Berlin. The fact that the location is removed from city bustle and participants are therefore kettled in the cozy but intense atmosphere, serves to concentrate the mind and infuse the air with a fragrance of purposeful conversations. I have been to a multitude of events and I have to say, the relatively small size and the personal lean of MLOVE make it stand out by a country (ahem) mile.

Selection of speakers is always a major issue for any serious event. Here, the consistently high quality and wide range of presentations were impressive. Design visionaries, global educators and high-flying strategists tend to naturally have a whiff of the stratospheric about them of course, but what was more impressive was the ease with which all of these accomplished individuals were happy to discuss their failures as well as their successes once the presentations were over. By far the most valuable aspects were the conversations which ensued with everyone happy to take off their suits of armour and engage in an atmosphere of potential vulnerability which, I’m sure, led to many exchanges on levels not usually encountered at professional conferences.

And then there were the, dare I use the word, workshops… Two formats were offered – both “structured but loose” – Open Spaces (themed discussions about topics at the intersection of technology, sociology, commerce and creativity) and Future Cubes – in essence brainstorming sessions trying to envision possible scenarios for the lives of individuals in the 2020′s. 

I won’t delve into the details of these since this falls into the “you needed to be there” category – otherwise it may all end up sounding somewhat incoherent at best. I have to say, however, that I was fascinated by how all teams (nine or ten of them) naturally chose the same format to present their Future Cubes ideas – that of a narrator and a troupe of actors. Organic, ancient storytelling is the natural go-to solution when we are free to select any solution. Truly an eye-opener. One team was complete with a Greek Chorus, though sans singing. (And this will be the one and only time I will have been seen in public wearing a crown on my head. Don’t ask.)

Ultimately, gatherings such as this serve many purposes but one clearly stands out from others, for me at least – the opportunity to swap ideas and discuss opportunities with people who, though coming from as far as Japan, New Zealand and Texas, are essentially much the same as me and face much the same challenges in their professional lives. An encouraging thought.