Creativity

I was asked to prepare some food for a local public radio station's pledge drive this week, and my first thought was that it would be a great opportunity to do something out of the ordinary. The cooking I do these days is mostly repetitive, and part of me craves a chance to do something different.

But I had some extra tamales after Sunday's market so I decided to steam those up instead, along with a simple salad. It made more sense on a practical level, and the tamales are special too.

I read a book many years ago called The E-Myth, a profound, insightful book that changed the way I think about business, although it was so badly written I almost couldn't get through it. The central idea is that each entrepreneur has to wear three hats: we're artists, technicians, and managers. (It was so long ago that I'm not even certain that those were the exact terms, but they do communicate the general idea.)

The artist represents the creative energy, that spark which drives many of us to strike out on our own. The technician is the detail and production oriented aspect of our personalities, while the manager looks at the big picture, making the business work as a whole. According to the author, most businesses fail because one persona dominates the equation at the expense of the others, and the key to having a successful business is striking a good balance.

Lately I've been more of a manager than an artist, and I've been lucky enough to be able to delegate a lot of the technician work. The food is creative in the sense that we're continually improving our vegetable mix, but that uses a quiet, rather than flamboyant, type of creativity.

These days the managerial work actually feels creative as well, learning to motivate my employees and finding simple, elegant solutions to day-to-day situations.