Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to face the enemy. The status quo. Studies show us that trust in leaders and in institutions is at an all time low.

The time is ripe for a bit of disruption, yes? In or out or shake it all about? To blow the crumbling organisational edifice to smithereens? To smash the hierarchies? To poke the establishment in the eye?

Make no mistake, there’s a glamour to rebellion. The idea of being on the side of righteousness. Taking down the bad guys. Blowing shit up. When you frame it like that, disruption takes on the aura of cool.

But four years later you’re still doing the same thing and getting what you always got. The bad guys have regrouped, rebuilt. Attitudes have hardened. Traps are set. And we walk right back in to the same old fights.

So, I’d like us not to talk about disruption, but instead about creation. Creativity. If something doesn’t work we don’t need to tear it down. We can build something beautiful instead.

And I’d like us to start by recognising that there is creative potential in all of us. Whatever you might think of your drawing skills. When we are children we create unfettered by convention and societal norms.

But the will to express ourselves creatively is soon knocked out of us. By our parents, by teachers, by managers, by circumstance. And so, a great many creatives go on to find themselves in a world of work where creativity and innovation is lauded in TED talks and in articles in the business media…

@SimonHeath1

…but where the reality is very different. Some people will be lucky enough to work in roles where they are able to use their creative talents. Many will not be so lucky.

Cancer cure?

First ever useful app?

First LGBT Mayor of London?

Our workplaces are full of makers, artists and writers. Bursting with them. But in the daily grind of business as usual, millions of creative thoughts every day go sadly unheard.

Thoughts that might lead to new products, new treatments, new politics, new literature and new art. Fresh perspectives on how best to create better work and working lives.

Now, ESPECIALLY NOW, perhaps more than ever before, we need those new thoughts and ideas. We need to realise that creativity.

But we won’t get anywhere without people. And a deep understanding of the latent creativity at our disposal. That lies slumbering in each and every one of us, ready to be awakened.

Creativity does not spring forth at our command or in the places we expect it to. It does not bend to our will. It can’t be neatly codified and labelled. It defies structures and attempts to contain it or to engineer for it.

YOUYes, you at the backwith the glasses on

But it needs people to enable it to flourish. To see it in ourselves and in others. And there’s one group of individuals in organisations and in this room RIGHT NOW who should be best placed to see it.

HR

Yes. You lot. You are there for the entire employee experience. You’ve been in on interviews, you seen CVs, you’re privvy to their outside interests. YOU can kindle that creative spark.

@SimonHeath1

YOU can make sure it’s not dampened down or extinguished all together. To make sure that voices are heard. To create spaces in which ideas are free to form. To encourage and lift up those ideas and thoughts. To get out of the way.

There WILL be obstacles in your way. So you’ll need to get creative too. And the real skill will be doing it without being seen as disruptive because that’s entirely the wrong kind of attention to bring to HR.

And this isn’t just a load of old Jackson Pollock’s. It’s just as much a state of mind. A way of being. Of showing up in the world. It’s not about tearing things down but about building something new.

@SimonHeath1

The Next Big Thing

Short-sighted notions of WHO it might come from might give us another Google. But we don’t need another Google. Creativity will bring us the next big thing. It might well come from an accountant whose boss thought that she was better suited to crunching numbers.

@SimonHeath1

Creativity is not the preserve of a distinguished elite. It belongs to all of us.It is in all of us.