Creativity and Process

Here is a good quote:

Now I have to tell you something, and I mean this in the best and most inoffensive way possible: I don’t believe in process. In fact, when I interview a potential employee and he or she says that ‘it’s all about the process,’ I see that as a bad sign … The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.
Elon Musk, founder of Space-X and Tesla Motors

One of the key aims of Scrum is to vastly simplify the process that you have.  The experience is people need a bit of process.  The sonnet form leads to greater creativity by poets.  They need a bit of structure.  Then any additional structure needs to be asked for, not imposed.

Most places have way too much process. And, as Elon Musk suggests, that is killing them.

But zero process is no good either.  Then there are zero agreements on ‘how we work together’.  Scrum is a very simple framework, not really a process, but just a framework.  About the right ‘size’ IMO.  One certainly can argue whether Scrum is the only framework or the best framework for your team.  But it is, I think, about the right size, complexity, weight.

And this is just the way to think with Scrum.

Scrum provides the bare minimum of process that actually increases creativity.

And, I think, after that, as process is forced on a Team, is starts to reduce creativity.  The heavier, the greater the reduction.  Now, creativity isn’t everything, but I think in the knowledge creation business, it is awfully important.  Perhaps the most important thing.

I saw the quote in an article discussing Six Sigma and Creativity.  That article is here.

 

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