Breaking Crayons Produces Creativity
Class now take out your pretty crayons. Remember we want to keep them neat. Handle them carefully. We don't want to break them.Across the United States school teachers continually tell their students this daily. But why? Are they trying to teach them orderliness or how to use some wonderful tools.
Keeping crayons neat, not peeling them (because children will not know the names of the colors), and not breaking them limits the creativity of the children and eventually diminishes their natural creativity as adults.
Crayons can be seen as metaphors for tools. Too often teachers, parents, even employers or friends and fellow managers or workers squelch natural creativeness by emphasizing neatness, orderliness, and limited, selected use of tools.
For instance, what are crayons? They are simply portions of colored wax. Why are they pointed? Because Binney & Smith, the Crayola™ manufacturers, thought they would look and work better if they were shaped like pencils? The pencil shape restricts the possibilities of line widths and shapes. Why do they have wrappers on them? Perhaps the manufacturers wanted the children to remember the colors name (in small print) and also to reinforce the brand name (in very large bold print)? Rarely do children or artists refer to colors by the manufacturers chosen names. Plus the name is not important. While the visual recognition of the color is.
If the inference of the teachers crayon lessons is taken literally, we need to learn to use our tools only in the manufacturers prescribed ways. If we do this we will only limit our potential capabilities as tool users, problem solvers and creative human beings. This is also true of the greatest number of our rules, policies and traditions in the common workplace. Breaking crayons symbolizes the need and act of change that is especially needed in todays medical profession.
What policies have you been following without question? What procedures have you not analyzed or challenged for relevancy today? What job assignments have you reviewed for their necessity recently? What work tasks have you reviewed for responsibility placement this year to better serve your patients? Break your crayons!
Perhaps you have a policy requiring multiple signatures for purchases over $100. Perhaps the policy was put into effect in 1963. Break this crayon. Can you raise the dollar value to $250 or more in todays dollars? Re-examine what time and steps are required for the signatures to be collected or who is actually collecting the signatures. Perhaps in 1963 the three or four people who then signed the requisition were located near each other but now are in varied locations at your facility? Back in 1963 it took a few minutes to collect the signatures. Today it might take 3 or 4 days using inter-department mail. Break this crayon!
Have you examined the locations of your equipment, department by department, use by use, shift by shift recently? The locations may be based on decisions made in 1978? When you think about it you may realize you have had 5 separate renovation projects since then. Break these crayons!
Have you purged your record storage recently? Break your crayons! Research continues to report that very few stored records are ever used again, even though they are required by law. Verify whether you could lessen your record storage without sacrificing completeness. Verify whether you have duplication or not. Ask, Can we store these records more efficiently or more effectively. Break these crayons!
Department by department, job by job, shift by shift examine equipment storage locations. You may even check to see if you have acquired multiple tools or materials that duplicate each other. Break your crayons!
Each of these may be crayons at your medical center, hospital or clinic. Each might function better or be better performed if they were broken and examined to be made more efficient and effective.
Is your floor plan layout like a box of unbroken crayons--limited in its flexibility and outdated for todays needs? Are doorways in their best locations? What about the placement of lighting? What about the type of lighting? Does it suit your needs in 1993? Are the colors of your walls, floors, ceilings, equipment, uniforms effective for today?
Each of these also may be crayons at your medical center, hospital or clinic. Each may be vastly improved if they were broken and examined and then replaced or modified to suit the 90s.
Change and flexibility are the greatest strategies and tools of the 1990s in the medical field. By learning to break our crayons. By training your staff to break their crayons you can discover and develop more efficient and effective policies, procedures, tools, methods, and systems. Each of these can benefit all aspects of the medical field.
So! Peel your crayons. Then break them. Then experiment making as many different kinds of lines as you can with the broken ends, the unbroken ends, the sides. Hold several different pieces at one time and discover what you can create. Challenge your rules, policies, procedures and traditions (paradigms). Try doing things differently, at least in small ways.
Using our tools as prescribed, teaches us only to follow instructions, not to think, not to create and therefore limits the possibility of discovery.
So what might you do? Go break a crayon today. Have fun. Discover as much as you can. Encourage employees to break crayons. In fact you may have a staff meeting and have everyone break crayons together. Remember those who see their tools only as hammers will only see their problems as nails. Instead see your hammer, your crayons, your tools as objects that may have endless uses when you apply your natural imagination and intelligence to challenges you choose.
©1990, 2009 Robert Alan Black, Ph.D.
RAB, Inc. - Cre8ng People, Places & Possibilities
P. O. Box 5805 Athens, Georgia 30604-5805
alan@cre8ng.com --
www.cre8ng.com1-706-353-3387
