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In my recent book Foresight I included the phrase ‘extreme creativity’ in the title because I wanted to make the point that the large and systemic problems we face will be successfully met not just by regular old every day creativity, which is fine, but by the extreme form that outperforms the normal to become supernormal.  This was also intended to draw attention to the complex nature of the challenges we face, and to propose that going forward we will organize and concentrate creative efforts to address the very biggest problems we face, such as climate change, the new energy infrastructure for human civilization, urban sprawl, pollution, rampant poverty, rising inequality, social injustice …

‘Extreme creativity’ is a practice of teams formed specifically to address these tough problems, especially when we realize that there’s no point in waiting around for someone else to get interested and take it on when we ought to be doing that ourselves.

In the aerospace industry teams like this sometimes come together, and they’re often given an old hangar somewhere off in the back corner of the airfield where no else bothers to go.  Happily left alone, they muck about successfully and quickly gain the highly honored name of  ‘skunkworks.’  Skunkworks teams often produce great ideas at a far higher rate than average or even above-average groups of engineers because the way of the skunkworks is a superior way of working.

Team members experience great joy, high satisfaction, and total commitment.  The very long hours they work don’t seem so bad because the work is important, fellow team members inspiring and fully engaged, and the sense of accomplishment is so profound.

Who’s on these teams?  Members of a skunkworks are the ones who can perform, which means you don’t end up on a team like this unless someone already on the team thinks you belong there too. Hence, it’s a matter of ‘what you know’ and ‘what you can do.’

As a result these teams tend to be exceptionally diverse. Competence knows no color, no ethnicity, no gender, it cares only about skill and commitment and getting the job done.

People who excel at their work are naturally drawn to a skunkworks, while conversely people who don’t work at a consistently high level naturally fall away.

Working in this way projects that might take months, years, or decades under ‘normal’ (read ‘mediocrity’) circumstances can somehow get accomplished in a skunkworks in weeks, even when dealing with limited resources. Or sometimes, because of limited resources, necessity being the mother of invention that it is…

So why don’t we organize all the work this way?  Well, we can, and we ought to. We’ve got some major challenges to address, and this way of working is most likely going to be the best way to do it.

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The post is adapted from my latest book, The Big Shift, which is now in press and will be available in June.

Upcoming Keynotes:

Langdon Morris will be giving keynote speeches at these upcoming events.  Please join us!

INCOSE:  International Council on Systems Engineering,
July 11, 2018, Washington DC.
https://www.incose.org/symp2018/home

Emerging Innovation Summit 2018: Melbourne, Australia,
October 3 – 5, 2018.
http://eis18.org/index.html

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The photo above was taken during an innovation course in
Dalian, China, May 2018.
Participants were learning about creativity and extreme creativity by practicing!